Incerto

In the last 50 years, very few artists have been as boundless as John Zorn, from his ideas to his energy to his organization. After first emerging in the experimental Wild West of New York’s downtown scene in the ’70s, the span and scale of Zorn’s work have only seemed to increase over the intervening decades. From his breakthrough reinterpretations of Ennio Morricone and ground-breaking musical “games” like Cobra to his splenetic art-grindcore with Naked City, from his jazz-reorienting in Masada to his compositional gauntlets like Moonchild and Incerto, Zorn has packed several lifetimes of music-making into 72 years. He seems to have only grown more active and tireless of late. Zorn has also been a crucial catalyst for the development of experimental music, whether establishing his great Tzadik label or his New York space The Stone, or convening brilliant bands that otherwise might not have come into existence. After making his Big Ears debut in 2022 and celebrating his 70th birthday here in 2023, Zorn returns to Big Ears with a staggering cast of collaborators for two days at the Bijou Theatre.

Though he does not play in the band itself, the astounding quartet Incerto—guitarist Julian Lage, pianist Brian Marsella, bassist Jorge Roeder, and drummer Ches Smith—testifies to two fundamental Zorn principles. First, he builds communities through collaboration, and, when the time is right, connects them. Longtime collaborators Smith, Roeder, and Marsella formed the band for 2022’s Suite for Piano, while Lage has made a few dozen records with Zorn (including New Masada) in less than a decade. Second, Zorn writes so well for the players assembled, keying on their particular strengths. That has perhaps never been more apparent than with Incerto, where athletic compositions that start, twist, stop, and redirect without warning hinge on the abilities of Lage, Marsella, Roeder, and Smith. Lage’s sizzling electric line at the start of “The Black Swan,” for instance, extends an invitation to Marsella to chase him toward the middle, a prompt Roeder then follows in a flurry of emphatic bass playing, like a high-skills game of cat and mouse. Inspired by “Existentialism, Psychoanalysis, and the Uncertainty Principle,” these pieces are also inspired by a band that seems capable of playing anything, its sense of harmony, rhythm, and precision locked in like a living machine.

Ensemble:

Julian Lage

Brian Marsella

Jorge Roeder

Ches Smith